


The stars are fire.

by FallingFaintly



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27644896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallingFaintly/pseuds/FallingFaintly
Summary: Spoilers for Troubled Blood"Doubt thou the stars are fire;Doubt that the sun doth move:Doubt truth to be a liar;But never doubt I love."- Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2There's a million ways to go,Don't be embarrassed if you lose controlOn the rooftop, now you know,Your body's frozen and you lost your soul.- Rita Ora, I Will Never Let You Down.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 30
Kudos: 89





	The stars are fire.

The main difference Robin noticed between London and Cornwall was the sky. At night in London, there was a orange haze when you looked up – it was never truly dark, unless you were enclosed in an alley, holding your breath as you moved swiftly through to the illusory safety of the street lamps. You might look up and see a moon, and perhaps in the outskirts, you would see a smattering of stars.

But Cornwall was different. Here on the coast, once the easy sun had slipped beyond the horizon and dusk had passed, you looked up and the idea of counting stars became the impossibility it was meant to be. It took her breath away as she stood in the courtyard of the manor house, craning her neck backwards and unable to quite resist thinking about infinity.

She heard a match striking behind her.

“Keep your eyes peeled and you might be able to make a wish. Meteor shower tonight,” Strike said, coming to stand beside her, grabbing a quick smoke before they went inside.

“Can you wish on a meteor, then?” Robin asked, still looking up.

“Gets the same results as wishing on anything else,” he replied, with the tone of derision she expected. She smiled and looked over at him, a bit surprised to see that he was actually looking up at the sky. She expected him to be stubbornly earthbound in his gaze; she enjoyed his profile for a second, mussed up curls and dented nose now as almost as familiar to her as her own reflection.

“Still. I like how small it makes you feel, seeing how many there are,” he said.

He looked across at her, and she snorted softly.

“Don’t reckon much makes you feel small,” she said. He grinned a little and finished his cigarette, dropping it and grinding it into the gravel, nodding his head towards the manor house and they both turned away from their stargazing and went inside.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The idea of coming to Trewince Manor Hotel after hours was to avoid tipping off the day staff to the installation of various surveillance devices. The partners discussed the plans with the small, grey haired man who owned the small hotel, and he was nervously enthusiastic and ruddy cheeked. Robin thought he might pass very well for a garden gnome if he’d worn a red pointy cap, but he was dressed as sensibly as one might expect for an out of season Cornish winter. Still, his thick cable-knit jumper somehow highlighted the portly, rotund belly and did nothing to really dispel the gnome effect.

“Business is slower, of course, at this time of year. But it ticks over, especially as we get closer to Christmas and romantic short breaks, and I cannot afford to have a thief and blackmailer on staff,” he told them, and the tension in his voice was evident.

“Of course, Mr Bailey,” Robin soothed, as they stood in the small lobby, with one door to their right leading to a small bar, and one to their left leading to a larger lounge. In front of them there was a staircase that seemed a little too grand for the setting, and a couple of doors beyond it which she understood led to the restaurant in one direction and the games room in the other.

“You’re ok with us putting what we need in place tonight?” Strike asked, gesturing down to the holdall by his feet.

“Yes, yes, do what you need to do. My wife and I will be staying in our annexe, and we have no guests this evening, which is why I thought it was a good opportunity. The staff aren’t due in until 6 o’clock, which should give you plenty of time, I hope,” Mr Bailey said.

“Plenty, yes. Thank you,” Robin assured him, and he handed over a modest bunch of keys and bustled off up the staircase to his first-floor annexe.

Once he’d gone, she turned to Strike, who had pulled a piece of paper from his inside pocket on which he’d written what they’d agreed to put in place. He cast a cursory glance at it, sniffed and put it back.

“Think we should start in the attic space. Bailey told me the staff use it as a break room, away from the guests, and it still seems like the best place to pick up some useful conversations,” he said, picking up the holdall.

“Right you are,” said Robin, and they climbed the grand staircase. At the top, it doubled back on itself and immediately became much less grandiose, and by the time they reached the fourth flight, up to the attic, it was behind a door and uncarpeted.

To Robin, ‘Attic space’ conjured up images of cobwebs and dust and mysterious items covered in sheets, especially in a building like this, but what she saw when Strike had pushed the door open and gone through it was a fairly tidy area. Two rooms led off either side of a small kitchen, which had a kettle, once probably white, now slightly yellowing plastic, and an incongruously modern stainless-steel espresso coffee machine. Each room was furnished with a random collection of mismatched armchairs and sofas, a few low tables, and in the corner of one, about 6 vacuum cleaners, the black leads carelessly wrapped around each one.

Each room had one large sash window, with what would have been a view of the sea at some distance from the front of the manor, but was now simply framing that velvety black sky with its mass of stars.

“You do this one, I’ll do next door,” Strike said, handing her what she needed. She enjoyed his focus; she shared it. But for some reason those stars had set off a persistent and distracting sense of sentimentality, and she found herself thinking about Strike standing in the courtyard, looking up at the stars because they made him feel small, suggesting she make wishes he didn’t believe in. She moved to the window and looked out. Beyond the white gloss painted frame, the rooftop formed a balcony, obviously not meant to be used except perhaps for access to the exterior roof. There were no railings, only a small wall at the very edge, offering maybe thirty centimetres protection from plummeting to the ground below. Robin returned to the infinity of stars for a second, before turning back and completing her task of secreting listening devices.

Strike had finished before she did. Obviously, he hadn’t wasted any time pondering the night sky. He came into the room as she was finishing, and the second after he had asked her if she was done, they heard the door at the base of the staircase open, and footsteps begin the climb. A look cast between them and some intuitive knowing that the brisk footsteps didn’t sound like the gnome-like owner, and Robin turned quickly to the sash window and threw it up.

“There’s a kind of balcony, but be careful, no railings!” She whispered hoarsely, letting Strike climb out into the chill air first, following him and pulling the sash closed with a second to spare before the door into the attic opened. Strike and Robin found themselves leaning flush against slate roof tiles, either side of the attic window. Inside, they heard two female voices, the first asking who left the bloody lights on, and the other suggesting they have a drink. It became apparent they were going to settle in the room opposite, but there was no feasible way for the detectives to get back into the attic and out again without being seen.

Robin was breathing hard with the sudden rush of adrenaline, and she let herself rest against the tiles to wait for the hammering of her heartbeat to slow. Strike was already peering back into the attic. The light had been turned off in the room they had come from, but the kitchen light and the light in the other room was still on.

“Fuck,” Strike muttered. “We’re stuck until they go.”

He looked over to Robin, whose breath was returning to a normal rhythm, but was slowly beginning to realize how cold it was out here, especially this high up. She turned her head to look at him. She had no idea how much he was enjoying looking at her leaning back against the roof like that, but he couldn’t help noticing that she was starting to shiver. It momentarily occurred to him that the idea of her trembling wasn’t completely unappealing, before he gave himself an internal slap.

“You ok?” He asked. “It’s bloody freezing out here.”

“I left my gloves in the Land Rover,” she said, bringing her hands up to her mouth and trying to stave off the cold with her breath. “How long do you think they’ll be?”

“A while, probably,” he shook his head. “They sounded like they were pissing about with the coffee machine.”

She nodded in reply, the shivering becoming much more pronounced.

“Hot coffee sounds just the job right about now,” she joked, and he could hear the hitch in her voice.

“C’mere,” he said, gesturing to her to come over to his side of the window. He shuffled along the roof a little to make space for her. “Put your hands inside my coat. Good thing about carrying extra timber is I retain the heat well,” he told her, smiling and pulling her hands underneath the thick overcoat. It did make a considerable difference to her hands, as she felt them thawing next to the thick jumper he wore under the coat, but the downside of that was how much it highlighted how cold the rest of her was. She was still shivering. He pulled her into himself at the feel of it, and she reminded herself he was doing it because she was obviously very cold, and this was a sensible move to stop them both getting hypothermia. Whatever she was feeling now, this was purely a practical embrace.

It was certainly an awfully close embrace. Strike had slipped his right arm under her head and his left had pulled her flush against the length of his body. Her head was lower than his, and she had no idea how much he was trying not to get lost in the slight apple scent of her hair, nor the moonlit sheen on it.

“This is a bit cosy,” she said lightly, mostly to distract herself from how laying this close to him was making her feel. He coughed slightly in response and made a noise that she could have sworn sounded like contentment. It made her curious enough to pull her head back to look at him, and the motion meant he pulled his head back a little, but he kept their bodies connected. “How long do you think we’ll have to stay out here? I’m already knackered,” she asked. The shivering had made her surprisingly tired, and the proximity to Cormoran, warm and safe and something else she couldn’t quite name, made the idea of falling asleep bundled up with him almost too enticing to resist.

“Nope. No sleeping allowed. We need to stay awake so we can get back into the warm as soon as possible. We won’t do well out here all night. We need to keep talking,” he replied firmly.

“Ok,” she said. “What shall we talk about?”

“I dunno,” Strike said, with a slight chuckle, knowing the absurd blankness that usually follows that kind of question. There was a pause. Robin dropped her head down again.

“Why did you change your number?” Robin asked into his chest. She felt him stiffen a little for a fraction of a second, and then reaffirm the pressure of his left arm around her.

“Because I didn’t want Charlotte to be able to contact me anymore,” he replied after a minute which felt much longer.

“That feels like a big decision,” she replied carefully. This was a bone she couldn’t help herself worrying; the blank space that she had managed to fill with questions and insecurities over how he felt about Charlotte. She wanted him to tell her, but she didn’t want to pry. She couldn’t bring herself to ask outright. It had felt like he was deliberately holding back, and she didn’t feel she could push.

“It is,” he said, quicker than she expected a reply. She had, in fact, expected a sudden change of direction, a firmly shut door on the topic. “It’s huge. But it’s the right thing to do. We’re not good for each other, and I can’t give her what she wants, even if I actually wanted to.”

It was more than she’d ever heard from him, somehow more intimate than she ever hoped. She checked herself. Why was she hoping for something? What was she hoping for? She was trembling still. She knew it wasn’t just the cold.

“What do you want, then?” She asked, shuffling even closer into him. It seemed like a logical move to try and cut off the trembling, but it wasn’t very effective. She splayed her hands out against his chest.

“Well, I don’t want her anymore. She couldn’t accept that. I think she thinks I belong to her and that’s that, and even if she rips my heart out, I have to stay connected to her through some mystical union shite. I realized there was no middle ground. All or nothing. I didn’t want all. So, nothing it was,” he said.

Robin was trying to keep her breathing even.

“You loved her, though?” She asked.

“Once, I s’pose,” he replied. “You could call it love. Not sure I still would. Not sure something that destructive should be called love.”

Robin noticed how he had dipped his head down; she could feel his breath in the hair on the top of her head, and her breath quickened slightly as she realized he was pressing a gentle kiss there. She closed her eyes, deciding to just enjoy this sudden intimacy, thinking of donkeys, chips on the beach, and the warm twinkle of lights glistening in champagne at the Ritz.

“What do you think love is, then?” She asked after a minute of indulging a bliss she felt sure was about to dissolve like fizz.

Strike lifted his left arm from where it had been pressed into her back, tucked his big fingers under her chin and gently turned her head up towards his.

“I think it’s probably this,” he said.

She didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t really matter because he was already leaning in to place a tender kiss on her mouth, and she didn’t hesitate to close the rest of the gap between them, their faces cold but their breath life-givingly warm. It no longer mattered how cold the rest of her body had been. Every cell in her body was suddenly aflame, and her hands were round his neck and his hands were in her hair and she wished they were far away from this exposed roof top.

She pulled back, gasping in a breath, and tried to focus on his face. She couldn’t believe this sudden passion was real. It felt like she had conjured it up in a delirium brought about by the cold. Cormoran’s eyes were honeyed with desire, his breath a little ragged.

“Are you sure about this?” She asked, self-doubt sweeping through her like a million vindictive daggers. His expression blunted every one of them.

“Yes,” he said, without a second’s hesitation, and kissed her again.

**Author's Note:**

> More Denmark Street Discord musings, this one arising from what we think needs to happen to jog these two out of holding back, and for Robin, it's definitely getting the worry about Corm and Charlotte over with. I've used I Will Never Let You Down as a prompt, given that JK Rowling has said it is their song.


End file.
